No, this is not about Mozilla’s experimental project (which has been also coined the term Jetpack). Automattic has just launched Jetpack, a new plugin which brings WordPress.com goodness to self hosted WordPress blogs i.e blogs that are hosted with WordPress.org.

With the Jetpack plugin for WordPress, webmasters or bloggers who don’t use WordPress.com and prefer using the open source CMS version can access features that depend on WordPress.com.

Installing Jetpack on Your Self Hosted WordPress Blog

Getting started with Jetpack is easy, you can either visit the homepage and download the files (740KB). Else you can do a search for Jetpack(without quotes) under Add New Pluginsin your blog’s administration area. I would prefer the latter option because this method does not require downloading the plugin, opening up an FTP client and uploading the files to the Wp-content/plugins directory.

Once you have installed the plugin, you will have to connect your WordPress.com account with the plugin preferences. If you do not have a WordPress.com account yet, you know where to start

In the next page, simply enter your WordPress.com credentials and click Authorize Jetpack

After you have authorized the plugin, you should be automatically redirected to the Jetpack settingspage of your blog, where you can choose the features you want to use on your self hosted WordPress blog.

Plugins And Features That Comes Bundled With Jetpack

Oh My, so many stuff under one hood. Yes, Jetpack brings a lot of WordPress.com features to your self hosted WordPress blog with a single click. You can individually handpick the features or plugins you want to use or choose all of them in one go.

This is quite similar to the first Fantastico installation provided by Dreamhost and some other hosting providers. If you have the experience of installing a new WordPress blog using Fantastico, you might know that some hosting providers provide a default bulk plugin and theme setups, after you’ve installed WordPress.

Following plugins and features are provided with Jetpack:

WordPress.com Stats: This one is a must, if you want to check your blog stats within your WordPress administration area. Simple, concise site stats with no additional load on your server.

After the Deadline: Helps you write better by adding spell, style, and grammar checking to WordPress.

Latex: Let’s you mark up posts with the LaTeX markup language, perfect for complex mathematical equations and other Ã¼ber-geekery.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg says:

Every time we launch something new on WP.com the first question is always asking how people can get it for their self-hosted blog. Now you can have your cake and eat it too â€” host your own blog, completely under your control and with the freedom of the GPL, and still get all the cloud goodies of our hosted service. It’s the best of both worlds.

would be much more useful to finally get a working unattended upgrade for worpress – it is unbelievable that a software with such a wide acceptance still has no possibility to install at least security fixes without needed interaction af an human beeing – these concepts are not new, so why are the wordpress devs so stubborn? We need unattended upgrades NOW! Millions of people logging into their wp blogs and clickig on “upgrade now” button is such an enormous waste of human lifetime – everybody could just do something more useful! PLEASE!